by Hugh B. Long
Devrim and Serkan spent several weeks in stasis while their ship was in hyperspace en-route to the edge of Alfar territory. Waking up after being in stasis was like waking up after a night of hard drinking, followed by a few rounds of hand-to-hand combat where you were on the losing end. The Dogan's two passengers were shaking out their limbs and rehydrating; the combination of these things were the recipe for recovery, and would help them feel up to par in a few hours.
Once they were sitting on the bridge, Devrim broke the silence, "How did you sleep, Serkan?"
"Like I was dead."
"Well, we're alive now, and ..." Devrim leaned in his chair hit a few keys on an instrument panel, "on course."
"Good."
Like talking to a fucking rock, Devrim thought. "Ok, we need to find some humans. My sire takes disappointment rather poorly."
Serkan spoke without looking at Devrim. "I believe your sire has little hope of us actually finding humans—a clue, perhaps."
"We need to do more than that—I—need to do more than that."
"As you wish," Serkan replied.
"I would like to capture an Alfar and interrogate it. Better yet, if we can capture one of their ships, we may find the location of these humans."
"This is a small, poorly armed scout ship Devrim. How do you expect us to capture one of their ships? No wonder your sire speaks poorly of you. You are a foolish boy."
Devrim felt his face warm as his temper rose. "What I lack in physical stature, I have to make up in other ways," he replied. "The Jotuns blessed us with more than our fists as weapons."
"Indeed, we have our teeth as well." Serkan smiled a big toothy smile.
Damned fool, Devrim thought. His father employed Serkan as a blunt instrument, at which he excelled. He was a merciless, if not artful, killer. "What I intend to do, is lure one of their ships into a trap. We will look for a small, unarmed vessel, that way if we are forced to fight, the advantage will be ours."
Serkan simply made a small grunt in acknowledgement.
* * *
Asteroid: 832956 / Star: Kepler 22
Senior-miner Folant stood with a wide stance, holding the mineral extraction nozzle to the asteroid's surface, while a bank of micro lasers surrounding the nozzle-head flashed in rapid succession, vaporizing selected minerals from the asteroids surface; simultaneously, suction directed the mineral vapor through the heated nozzle and tubes, and into the Alfar mining ship's storage tanks.
The Type-7 mining ship had no jump drive and was a high capacity intra-system vessel dispatched for low gravity mining operations with a crew of two to three miners. The ships were designed to be very simple to operate, requiring no special piloting experience. The miners simply programmed the coordinates of the mining site into the nav-computer and engaged autopilot to reach their destination.
Junior-miner Heledd sat in the cockpit monitoring gauges while her partner was on the surface operating the mining nozzle.
"The storage tanks are at ninety percent full, Folant," said Heledd.
"Very well, please update me when we are at ninety-nine percent.”
Mining operations in the Cygnus sector were routine, and usually uneventful. As Heledd sat monitoring the storage levels, she heard a repeated beeping emanating from the comm panel.
"Folant, I believe I have detected a distress beacon. I am receiving no audio, just the distress signal with embedded coordinates."
"Understood," Folant replied, "what are our current tank levels?"
“We are currently at ninety-four percent, sir.”
“That will have to do. Returning to the ship."
* * *
As Folant and Heledd approached the distress beacon's coordinates, they saw an unfamiliar vessel on the display screen, tumbling gently and leaking fluids into space.
"Heledd, please extend the grappling arms so we can stabilize the vessel."
"Yes, sir." She pressed a few keys and began guiding a pair of organic grappling arms toward the damaged ship. The arms telescoped smoothly toward their target, and in short order Heledd managed to stabilize the derelict.
"There may be survivors, sir."
"Indeed. I will prepare for EVA and see if we can render any assistance."
After suiting up and exiting the hatch, Folant activated the thrusters on his EVA suit and pulsed slowly to the damaged ship.
Folant reported in on his comm. "This is very interesting, Heledd. The ship does not appear to be Alfar in origin."
"Human, perhaps, sir?"
"I do not believe so. Not based on the few I have seen at the Heyrn Coedwig Starport."
"Fascinating," Heledd replied.
"I see a hatch. I’ll attempt to open it." Folant pulled what he hoped was a hatch release handle, and sure enough, a puff of atmosphere condensing into a mist of ice, confirmed his theory. It was dark inside the airlock, but with his wrist mounted light, he saw a second hatch on the other side of the airlock. Folant closed the hatch behind him and listened as the airlock was re-pressurized. Once the process was complete, he pulled the release to the inner hatch, then stepped through into a corridor. He was still weightless so he assumed the ship's artificial gravity was either damaged or turned off; or perhaps non-existent? His suit's sensors confirmed the ships internal atmosphere was viable.
He started pulling himself through the corridor, illuminating various sections of the ships interior. He was startled when he saw two humanoid forms floating in the hallway; survivors?
Folant activated his wristcom. "Heledd, I see - "
His report was cut short by a flash of dark purple light.
"Folant? Please repeat. I did not receive your last transmission.”
There was no answer.
“Senior-miner Folant, please report."
Silence.
Heledd continued attempting to contact Folant on the ship's comm system to no avail.
* * *
Heledd became very concerned. She received no response from Folant in thirty desperate minutes. Repeated attempts to make contact were fruitless. She decided she would don her EVA suit and see what happened to Folant.
Heledd was normally a calm person. Mining asteroids was a routine activity, and usually uneventful. Though she was young, most considered her very well composed, but today her composure was being put to the test. She could feel her hands shaking as she put on the gloves of her EVA suit. They snapped magnetically to the arms, despite her trembling. She snapped shut her helmet and checked the instruments on her suit’s wrist panel—all was normal.
Maybe he had a suit malfunction?
Heledd repeated Folant’s journey and was soon inside the damaged vessel’s airlock. She closed the external hatch, and felt the atmosphere being pumped into the chamber. Her suit’s sensors indicated it was breathable, but she decided it would be best to keep her helmet on, just in case that was a mistake Folant made. Maybe the atmosphere inside the ship was contaminated?
She scanned the corridor with the light mounted on her suit. Nothing—just a long hall leading to a chamber at the end. She pulled her weightless body through the corridor by a hand rail, mounted on both right and left sides.
Suddenly, gravity kicked in, and she was yanked to the floor, knocking the air out of her lungs.
Looking up and trying to catch her breath, she saw a man holding a weapon of some kind. He said something she did not understand, then saw a flash of dark purple light.
* * *
Heledd struggled to clear her mind as she regained consciousness. It was like trying to stand up with a great weight on her shoulders. Her EVA suit was gone, and she wore only her thin green jumpsuit.
Her eyes registered a dim light and she saw figures moving around in front of her. She heard screaming. It was Folant. He was pleading in the old tongue, Yggdrasi, instead of Alfish. She wasn’t fluent in Yggdrasi, but she knew he must be pleading for his life. His tone was enough to tell her that.
As her mind cleared, and her vision along wi
th it, she almost wished she were unconscious again. She saw Folant on the wall opposite her, bloodied and battered—they were torturing him. Heledd felt panic suffusing her body, mixed with a numbness, and a desire to take action, all at the same time. Being in pain is one thing; watching a friend in pain while you are unable to help, is quite another.
One of the men looked like an Alfar. He was stocky, and grizzled, with a heavily scarred face—and he was approaching her. “Ah, so you are awake. Good. Perhaps you will answer our questions. Your friend has been unwilling to do so.” The scarred one looked her up and down with a cruel smile. He was tall and powerful looking, like an Alfar warrior, but his skin was a sickly pale-blue, as though he’d never been outdoors.
Heledd was not the most attractive female, and she knew that, but the creature’s lascivious inventory of her body, replaced panic with dread. He turned abruptly and looked back at Folant. “If you are not afraid for your safety, perhaps you care for hers? No?”
Folant looked up wearily, impotently.
Her captor wheeled quickly back toward Heledd, the back of his hand connecting hard with her face. She was stunned again. She could feel warm blood trickling from her nose and pass her lips. Her cheek pulsed with pain.
She and Folant were restrained upright in some kind of harness. There were straps, and odd lights around each of the vertical bays. It looked like there was a bank of six bays on Folant’s side, and probably on Heledd’s as well.
“I am sorry,” the scarred man said to her, “I do not want to damage my merchandise, but your friend is very vexing.” He turned back to Folant. “I want you to watch your friend, Folant. See what we can do if you refuse to cooperate.” He pressed a button on his wrist. Heledd’s mind exploded in agony. She screamed as she’d never screamed before. It was as if her head would burst from the pressure. Her entire body was ravaged by it, then it suddenly subsided. She breathed rapidly, but shallowly.
The scarred man looked at her again with a neutral expression on his face, his finger hovering over the button. Heledd’s head shook sideways. Here eyes pleading, please no. Please gods, no!
He pressed the button again.
Folant screamed and fought against his restraints watching helplessly as they tortured Heledd. “Please! Stop! I will tell you what you need to know!”
The scarred man released the button, and Heledd gasped for breath, feeling as though she’d been held underwater. She started panting, tears streaming down her face. She was weeping with her entire body. She had no previous concept of such pain; it was unimaginable.
“There, see? That is all we wanted,” said a smaller man—almost a boy—who stepped out of the shadow of the corridor. He was a head shorter than the scarred man, and thinner, but had the same ghostly blue pallor to his skin.
“There is no need for us to be uncivilized, is there? My name is Devrim, and my companion is Serkan. Would you like to tell us your names?”
“I- am- Folant,” he stammered, as he caught his breath.
“And your friend?” Devrim asked
“She is, Heledd.”
“Excellent. Now that we are on such amicable terms, can I ask you politely for those coordinates?”
Folant stared at Devrim, but said nothing.
“If I am imposing, I can return later … after Heledd and Serkan have had more time to get acquainted.” Devrim grinned.
Heledd’s eyes pleaded with Folant. Please, she thought, do not let him press the button again. Folant, please!
As if he understood her silent plea, he spoke, “Yes, I will get the coordinates for you. They are not in this ship’s database, but I have a friend who will have access to them.”
“Excellent!” Devrim replied, with an ear-to-ear grin.
* * *
Planet: Nearing New Midgard / Star: Epsilon Eridani
Gina Russo reclined contentedly, buckled into her seat as the Sparrow precipitated out of hyperspace and into the Epsilon Eridani system. Gina was thinking about her new job. It was a big step leaving her home, her family, everything she knew. But the opportunities on New Midgard were boundless.
The colony there was growing fast, very fast. The SID had underestimated peoples’ attraction to this new colony. The population growth was nearly twice what they expected. Not only were people emigrating to New Midgard, but people there were having lots of babies.
The Earth's already massive population of sixteen billion, and harsh legal controls on births, meant there was no room for growth on Earth. Even with all the advanced technology acquired since contact with the Alfar, Earth was beyond its carrying capacity. The planet simply could not sustain more people and remain viable for future generations. The last century had been dedicated to reversing the destructive trends of the previous one, and was still a work in progress. This meant New Midgard was a Shangri-La for people who wanted larger families, new opportunities, or just some adventure.
As the new Security Director for Norvik, Gina would be responsible for building the entire security infrastructure. There were no people, processes, or mechanisms currently in place; a clean slate. Very few people got the opportunity to do this. In fact, Gina couldn’t think of any. Security was essential for any population. Not that there were too many security concerns on New Midgard currently, but the population growth was necessitating such systems be put in place, and her previous experience as a Marine Corps military policewoman, gave her lots of training for hostile conditions and quarrelsome people. Gina would be like a Sheriff in an old western frontier town—she even carried a plastic silver star which said Sheriff on it—just for kicks.
Over the intercom came the announcement of the ETA to New Midgard—five hours. Almost there, she thought. Flight attendants were walking the aisles, taking lunch orders and handing out beverages; an eight-hour interstellar flight was much like any mundane terrestrial flight.
Gina realized how hungry she was. At five foot eight inches, and a hundred and forty pounds, Gina was an athletic woman. Not the treadmill-running, tennis-playing kind of athletic, but the mixed martial arts, eat big men alive kind of athletic; although you would never know it by looking at her very feminine form. But she was a tough lady, she had to be. Many woman police and security officers relied on their sidearms for protection—Gina didn't have to. It was there, if she needed it, but for the day she didn't have it, she was ready.
The first clue there was a problem, came when Gina heard two sharp thunking sounds on the hull of the Sparrow. People in any kind of vessel, whether sailing ship, starship or airplane, all react badly when they hear loud, unexplained noises on their hull.
She looked around the cabin. Nothing else seemed to be out of the ordinary.
Over the intercom came the Captain’s voice, “Ladies and gentlemen, please remain in your seats with your full acceleration-harnesses fastened.”
That was disturbing news. Typically full harnesses were reserved for emergencies like loss of artificial gravity. She still felt her one-hundred and forty pounds pressing in to the seat, so gravity wasn't the issue.
Next came a hissing sound, followed by a metallic banging on the top of the hull, in the direction of the Sparrow’s cockpit. With a clang, she saw a section of the hull fall through the top of the ship, but the atmosphere in the cabin was stable. Through all this, Gina remained dead calm.
She thought it was possible another ship docked with the Sparrow. Some emergency perhaps?
The passengers were yelling and getting panicky. Thoughts of terrorists hi-jacking planes from previous centuries came to Gina’s mind, as well as pirates from even further back.
She had a feeling some bad-shit was about to go down, and decided to act. She unfastened her harness and dropped down to the floor, keeping an eye on the hole in the ceiling. A tall man, Alfar maybe, dropped through the hole, holding a rifle of some type. He had a strange pale blue complexion.
In her peripheral vision, and through reflections on metallic surfaces, she saw a flash of dark purple light
, then dozens of the passengers around her dropped to the floor. She looked across the aisle and noted several people; they appeared to be unconscious. The big man fired several more times as he walked down the aisles. Must be some kind of stun-gun, she thought. She lay absolutely still.
The big man walked back up the aisle toward the hole and shouted something. A smaller man, also a pale blue Alfar, dropped down. Not holding a gun, she noticed. The two Alfar began speaking. The smaller one seemed to levitate back up through the hole, then the larger one started dragging the immobile passengers under the hole. Once there, they began to float up through the hole. Gina remained still, and quiet, waiting for some opportunity to act.
When the big Alfar got to her, she remained quiet and limp. She let him drag her to the hole, then she felt herself lose all feeling of weight and began floating up through the hole in the Sparrow’s hull, then through a hatch of some sort; was she in another ship?
Through a narrow slit between her eyelashes she saw the smaller Alfar moving people into a rough group, almost a pile, a few feet away from where he was standing. She let him grab her and move her toward the rest of the passengers while she scoped out her surroundings.
She was in another ship, but didn’t see or hear any other Alfar. There was almost no gravity on the side of the ship where she lay, but where the smaller Alfar was standing, there seemed to be artifical gravity. Or maybe he was wearing magnetic boots. More likely they had artificial gravity control down the axis of their ship; it was off where the Sparrow’s passengers were being piled, and on,where the Alfar stood. She needed to find a way to get to him, but she had no leverage or traction with the gravity off. But if she inched her way toward his side …
Gina waited for a few more passengers to be loaded before she began moving, by millimeters, so the small Alfar wouldn’t notice her.
